Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900. George Henry Makins

rifles; hence the fire should have been at any rate of an average degree of accuracy. In the advances of our own men, anthills and stones were practically the only cover to be obtained, and little or no help was given by variations in the general surface. All these points seem to favour a large proportional number of hits on the part of the riflemen. I very much regret that I am unable to say what was the proportional number of shell wounds among the men hit, but I can say with some confidence that among the wounded it was not as great as ten per cent. I should be inclined to place it as low as five per cent. Again, I cannot fix the proportionate occurrence of wounds from bullets of large calibre such as the Martini-Henry, but this was certainly not large. I think if ten per cent. is deducted to represent the number of hits from either of these forms of projectile, that we may fairly assume the remaining 90 per cent. of the wounds to have been produced by bullets of small calibre. The numbers of the opposing forces were probably fairly even.

      Taking all these circumstances together, and bearing in mind that our army was always in the position of having to make frontal attacks on men well protected in strong positions, I think it must be allowed that a fair idea should be possible of the effectiveness of the modern weapons. Only one circumstance, one inseparable from any fighting with the Boers, seems to affect the numbers in an important manner. This consists in the fact that the Boer rarely fights to the bitter end, hence the greater proportion of his hits are obtained at long distances.

TABLE I

       Table of Contents

	Number of troops engaged	Killed	Wounded	Missing	Total	Percentage of killed and wounded to number of men engaged
Belmont:
Officers	297	3	23	0	26	8.75
Non.-com. officers and men	8,396	55	206	4	265	3.15
Total	8,693	58	229	4	291	3.34
Graspan:
Officers	326	3	7	0	10	3.06
Non.-com. officers and men	8,213	18	163	7	188	2.29
Total	8,539	21	170	7	198	2.31
Modder River:
Officers	335	3	19	0	22	6.56
Non.-com. officers and men	9,856	67	377	18	462	4.68
Total	10,191	70	396	18	484	4.74
Magersfontein:
Officers	379	18	48	2	68	17.94
Non.-com. officers and men	11,068	148	669	101	918	8.29
Total[1]	11,447	166	717	103